Two blind men sit beside the road out of Jericho. Jesus is leaving the city with a great crowd behind him, on his way to the Jerusalem where he has just said he will be condemned and crucified. The two men hear that he is passing and cry out with a title that names him the heir to David's throne. They cannot see his face, and they have his identity right. Son of David is the title the crowds will shout at the entrance to Jerusalem (Matthew 21:9), and these two men use it first.
Just before this scene, two disciples with perfectly good eyes asked Jesus for the places of honor in his kingdom (Matthew 20:20-28). Now two men who cannot see ask for mercy and name him correctly in the same breath. The brothers' request showed how little they saw. The beggars' request shows how much they saw.
Matthew gives the cry twice, word for word, once before the rebuke and once after it. The two men do not soften the request or find a politer way to make it. They say the same words again, only louder and with more of their breath behind them.
The crowd tells the two men to be quiet. Matthew does not say why. The crowd is traveling toward Jerusalem with Jesus, and two beggars shouting from the roadside may have looked like an interruption to something important. Whatever the reason, the rebuke produces the opposite of its intended effect, and the men shout louder. Their need has met the one person who can answer it, and a crowd's disapproval is a small obstacle beside that. Whatever dignity they might lose by refusing to be quiet, they have already counted it as the lesser loss.
Then comes the sentence the scene turns on: 32"And stopping, Jesus called them." A great crowd is moving with him, Jerusalem lies ahead, and the cross waits there. He stops anyway, for the two men the crowd just tried to silence. The procession can be halted by a cry for mercy.
He asks them a question whose answer seems obvious: 32"What do you want me to do for you?" They get to say it in their own words, 33"Lord, let our eyes be opened." The request is short and exact, with nothing wasted on it. Matthew says 34"Jesus in pity touched their eyes," and 34"immediately they recovered their sight and followed him."
This is the last healing Matthew records before Jesus enters Jerusalem, and it ends with two men walking behind him toward the city where he will be crucified. They can see now, and what they see is the road to the cross.
Is there a cry you have quieted because the moment seemed wrong, or because someone told you to be silent? The cry can be as short as theirs: Lord, have mercy on us. Say it again, louder, to the one who stops.
Prayer
Father, we have sat beside our own roads needing mercy while a crowd, and sometimes our own instincts, told us this was not the moment. Give us the refusal to be quieted that these two men showed. Thank you that you stop for the very people everyone else is hurrying past. Open our eyes, and let what we see be you. In Jesus' name, amen.